Preview of this week’s regular Inglewood city council agenda for April 9
INGLEWOOD – This week’s Inglewood city council agenda includes action related to the ongoing construction project for Steve Ballmer’s Intuit Dome.
The Public Works department is seeking to quitclaim “all related roadway easement rights” on a portion of 102nd Street west of Doty Ave.
According to the accompanying staff report, the City will not receive any funds in the transaction as outlined in the Amended and Restated Exclusive Negotiating Agreement to facilitate the construction of the Intuit Dome on August 15, 2017.
The City is expected to approve a three-year agreement with Gruber and Lopez Inc., which will not exceed $225,000 to audit Transit Occupancy Tax (TOT) which hasn’t been performed since 2015.
The audit consists of hotel, motel and short-term rental operators opening their books to justify claiming exemptions for transients who reside in a certain unit for less than 30 days. They will also audit that the 15.5% TOT tax being paid to the City is accurate.
These audits are to ONLY cover ROOM RATES and NOT ancillary services the hotel, motel, and short-term operators charge to their guests (i.e. service fees, key fees, cleaning fees). TOT tax can only be collected on the DAILY ROOM RATE.
The last audit performed was mired in deficiencies due to overzealous auditors inappropriately assessing fees to the owners. This caused most of the invoices attributed to the audits to be written off as “bad debt” in August 2020.
The audit is expected to cover the years 2021, 2022, and 2023.
The City Clerk’s office is requesting a payment in the amount of $462,014.48, be made from the City’s General Fund Reserves, to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk towards election costs for the November 2022 election.
According to the staff report, the council authorized payment on May 2, 2023, but never cut the check. Inglewood Unified School District submitted payment in the amount of $164,461.54 for their share of costs for school board elections.
The staff report does not indicate why it took 11 months to rectify the error.
Finally, the City Attorney’s office is requesting payment for payment of an outstanding $13,095 invoice to Harris & Associates who was tasked with investigating a member of the Inglewood Police Department.
The City Attorney’s office did not attach a copy of the outstanding invoice to the staff report to indicate when the invoice was submitted and determined to be late.
The City entered into the agreement with the law firm in September 2023.
1 Comment
Hopefully others have noted that the city will not be compensated for the public property we have known as 102nd street west of Prairie.
That could be considered a gift of public property at and even greater obvirus degree than the absolutely pathetic amount we were compensated for where the actual dome is under construction.
To name the street after Ballmer appears to be more of a thank you from the Mayor for making the lawsuit re the Forumn go away when the testimony of the former executive assistant was being re,-considered.
Pathetic timing in light of the fact that the names of those who founded the city, brought us our water system, negotiated for our electricity and gave of their lives, their fortunes and their skills for limited if any compensation are being eliminated along with the taxpayer owned schools.